Archive for October, 2011

It’s been two weeks since we last looked at the Swiss Re Cat Bond Performance Indices to assess how they have performed and reflect the mood and sentiment within the insurance-linked securities market. Last time we looked, the price return index had dipped slightly due to the news about the losses that the Mariah Re […]

The first fourth quarter catastrophe bond has completed and the market is looking at the pipeline of deals hoping that they will all come to market. There’s been a lot of discussion of the non-correlated nature of insurance-linked securities in the last week and commentary on growing investor interest in the asset class. Here, to […]

Just when you thought the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season might have come to an early close, another tropical storm forms in the western Caribbean sea. Tropical storm Rina, forecast to become hurricane Rina in the next few days is currently situated off the eastern coast of Honduras and is forecast to strengthen steadily as the […]

Kenya is again suffering from a drought which is causing hardship and deaths among the millions of affected people in the region. The resulting food crisis is one of the worst seen and despite the global awareness of the plight of drought affected Africans the support they receive remains minimal. However the drought has shown […]

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, has been named a leading law firm in a number of areas of structured finance in the latest edition of the IFLR 1000, a guide to the world’s leading financial law firms. Areas of specific interest to our readers will be their recognition for work in derivatives, securitization and specifically […]

Lane Clark & Peacock LLP (LCP) have announced that they advised UK home and general merchandise retailed Home Retail Group in a £280m pensioner buy-in transaction for their pension scheme which saw them de-risk by transferring their liabilities to insurers.

Desmond Potter has joined Guy Carpenters GC Securities as Managing Director and Head of GC Securities M&A Advisory, EMEA. He joins them after a number of years at Aon Benfield and prior to that the Benfield Group. His most recent role at Aon Benfield saw him leading the insurance-linked securities origination and structuring team in […]

AXA Global P&C have successfully tapped the capital markets for additional European windstorm cover with their second Calypso Capital catastrophe bond deal. The return to the market from AXA saw Calypso Capital Ltd. Series 2011-1 begin to market as a €100m tranche of notes but by the time the deal closed they managed to secure €180m […]

More positive news in the global financial press today for catastrophe bonds as Bloomberg (here on the SF Gate website) discusses the returns the market has offered since the earthquake in Japan struck and dented the markets confidence. They compare the returns of an index of cat bonds with the returns of other assets and […]

It’s been a trying year for the insurance-linked securities and catastrophe bond market as participants have had to come to terms with numerous large catastrophe events, some of which have resulted in losses to investors in specific cat bonds, a market slow down while it digested the events and the much discussed change to risk […]